in reply to Re: New to Perl Link
in thread New to Perl Link

Actually, the "Guide to the Monastery" and (especially) "Tutorials" links do a remarkably good job of introducing people to the monastery and to Perl. As an experiment, go to the front page and see how long it takes you to find them
A lot of Monks forget: if a person isn't logged in, the top of the front page has a the line...
If you're new here please read Perl Monks Site FAQ
Perhaps the real issues are:
  1. the FAQ should start with the the verbage at the top of "the Perl Monks guide to the Monastery and more links to generic info about Perl (ie: the Tutorials)
  2. The FAQ link should be even more prevelant on the front page for people who aren't logged in (maybe the whole front page should be replaced with the FAQ for people who aren't logged in ?)

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Re: Re: Re: New to Perl Link
by educated_foo (Vicar) on May 20, 2002 at 06:15 UTC
    A lot of Monks forget...
    That would describe me. It's been awhile since I toasted my cookie file. I'd rather not go to great extremes of RTFM -- the frontpage becoming a FAQ seems a bit hostile -- but something more prominent for anonymonks might be good. Mentioning more prominently the tutorials' aspiration to become "an online textbook" would help. Maybe something like "if you're new to Perl, you may want to check out the Tutorials section, which contains both a gentle introduction to the language, and answers to frequently asked questions."

    Bottom line -- you can encourage people to read FAQ's and tutorials either by making these things more accessible (as in well-organized and informative), or by making them afraid to ask questions. I'd rather see us do more of the former, since a lot of the work has (I think) already been done.

    /s

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